Los Campesinos! - Neil Campesinos

Words: Andreas Heuer

Speaking from his home in London, Neil Campesinos!, guitarist for Cardiff based Los Campesinos!, is composed and grounded. Considering tomorrow sees Neil and his fellow Campesinos jetting to Barcelona for the first stop of a European tour, it’s hard to understand how composure and grounding would be at the forefront of anyone’s demeanor. Then again, not everyone can lay claim to recording four universally acclaimed albums in as many years, and participating in numerous successful tours through Europe, the US and UK. Differing this time though, touring beyond Europe and the US lies a long awaited trip to Australia as part of the 2012 Harvest Festival. “Australia is kind of a territory we’ve always been really excited to work in, but never had the opportunity to until now. It’s funny because right from the start, even before our band got signed, we were contacted by an Australian label. This was within about three days of us initially putting stuff up on Myspace. We were like, ‘oh shit, we’re getting in touch with people from Australia’, but oddly nothing came of it, and since then we’ve never really had the chance to do anything until we got the offer to play at the Harvest Festival”. Being no strangers to festivals or touring, the band is coming hot off the heels of a huge series of shows, including appearances at this years Reading and Leeds Festivals. “Yeah, they were really great. I mean, we’ve played Reading and Leeds a couple of times now, but to open the main stage was both exciting and daunting. It’s weird being in the opening slot, you feel like you have to entertain this big expecting crowd, but both shows went really well”. With Festival appearances conquered across the world, it’s now time to come down under and play for a completely new audience. So how do Los Campesinos! prepare to go out on tour? “Well we do generally rehearse a set, if for nothing else to make sure it’s not too long or not too short, but the core structure of a set will generally remain the same other than the odd random song we throw in to keep it interesting. That said, coming to Australia will be really refreshing regardless because it’s really exciting performing to a new crowd. It makes playing something we play every night like You, Me Dancing, fresh again. We don’t have any production and we don’t have any lighting or anything like that. I think with seven people on stage it’s a bit of a spectacle anyway, and we just try and have a good time".

Los Campesinos! live shows certainly don't stop at just Festival bookings either, as an invitation to play their (then) latest single, By Your Hand on The Late Show with David Letterman came about earlier in the year. “Yeah, that was insanely exciting and nerve racking. You have a rehearsal earlier in the day, then 10 minutes before you actually go on, you get a call during an ad break and that’s it, in no time at all you’ve got to plug in and tune up, then your introduced and it’s GO, your playing. I remember easing into it towards the end of the song, but the next thing, He’s was on stage and it was over. It was amazing, and quite surreal”.

These recent heights Los Campesinos! have been reaching are largely due to their latest album, Hello Sadness. The album has received unanimous universal acclaim and has seen the band riding a wave of success since it was released almost a year ago. This album sees a significant and conscious musical shift from their previous recording Romance is Boring.

“I think with Romance is Boring there was a lot going on musically. It was a long album and it was heavy. Not heavy as in metal, but more in that the songs were packed with things going on. We often had several different instruments doing their own thing at once, and there were a lot of noise tracks that aren’t necessarily audible, but certainly helped to make it a very dense record. On the flip side, I think with Hello Sadness we just thought we’d do the opposite, strip it back and try to make the songs really direct. Part of that was not being afraid to have two or three instruments doing the same thing and just follow the same patters. I think that probably took more work and more thought to strip it back that way than we ever expected”.

“In terms of the pace of the record, we recorded it in Spain and I’d say that had an impact on the record’s sound too. John Goodmanson who produced it, often said to us if you record in a busy, bustling city, then your record will often come out so much faster than you realize, and more aggressive too. So we were in the city for a while, then we’d go to the Spanish countryside, which has this laid back pace to it, and I think that may have crept into the record too”.

Actual recording of the album came about only a matter of weeks after singer and lyricist Gareth Campesinos split from his girlfriend. This situation resulted in last minute lyric rewrites and a degree of sentiment emphasized throughout the album.

“It’s funny because Hello Sadness really is a classic break up album, so I guess a melancholy tone is certainly present. Obviously a lot of people see it as a bleaker record, a sadder record, and to be fair much of the record is, but it’s still got this pop sensibility to it which is something I think we really wanted to work on as well”.

So how exactly do a band, let alone one with seven members, work on something like creating a ‘pop sensibility’, let alone achieve any kind of common creative goal in a unified and orderly manner?

“It’s organized and it’s always been that way. Ever since the early days it’s always worked that Tom writes the basics of songs then I’ll come up with a bunch of ideas and hone them together into very direct focused things. We’ll record some demos, and then send them out to everybody. Gareth will start working on lyrics and then we’ll all start rehearsing. Arrangements and different ideas will develop, and we’ll all just work at them until they are spot on. I remember before we recorded Hello Sadness we spent about four weeks rehearsing and just getting to know the songs really well. We’d spend time perfecting drum parts and small things like extending choruses and break down bits, nothing all that exciting to your average guy, but when your working on a bunch of new songs it’s a bit of a big deal, and it’s really exciting”.

With touring off the back of Hello Sadness winding up at the conclusion of playing the Harvest Festivals, it would be reasonable to assume heading back to the studio soon there after would be the next logical step for the band. “Yeah, we’re talking about it, but only really loosely at the moment. I think Tom’s working on stuff, but none of us are set for a specific date. It’s great because for a band of our size, we’re big enough to do our own thing and tour and all that, but we know we really need to keep creating and putting records out there”. As with any creative entity, inspiration is sourced from a number of avenues. In the case of Los Campesinos! being a seven person strong membership, the respective sources the band collectively absorb inspiration from must be varied and diverse. “Yeah. In the early days we were all just big fans of 90’s American indie rock bands like Pavement, and we still are, but how it’s reflected in our output? Well that’s a funny one. As a listener, you pick your own reference points don’t you? I mean, you go see or hear a band and think that sounds a lot like, lets say My Bloody Valentine, and it probably does sound like My Bloody Valentine because that particular band is ripping off My Bloody Valentine. The catch is if the listener has never heard My Bloody Valentine before, then the band gets away with ripping them off. This ripping off may come from the bands subconscious, as they are simply fans and inspired by My Bloody Valentine’s sound, or it may be a deliberate desire to sound like them via imitation. Whatever it is though, I think with us, everyone in the band has their own special interests and a number of them respectively, which really varies between the group. Not all of it will filter back into the band’s creative output, but it’s really good for a group dynamic, and it keeps our sound varied which I think is just as important and stops us sounding like anything else”. The enormous impact digital media and the Internet is having on musicians differs greatly depending on a number of factors. In the case of Los Campesinos! it’s been a necessary medium to gain exposure.

“If it weren’t for the Internet we wouldn’t be having this conversation right now. It was literally as simple as posting songs on Myspace and putting a link to them on a message board. People got in touch with us and that was it. We were signed and we got a record deal. We really are the definition of a Myspace band. From there though is where it gets really tricky, and there’s nothing you can do about it. So many people just take music from the Internet now and you kind of just have to work with it. A lot of independents don’t have the money to take it on, so you have to think about how can you can turn it into a positive and embrace it. There’s beginning to be a slight resurgence in people paying for music again and generally supporting artists, but as I say we wouldn’t be around without the Internet so I can’t complain about it too much”.